MIA 3/16/22

I have been missing for a number of days. Believe me I have not forgotten you nor our sharing of thoughts. I have been so, so, so BUSY preparing for my official transition onto parole, my final days at the CC Center, my upcoming driver’s test, at least three impending speaking engagements and what I’m gonna share with you guys here. An article I was asked to write as a member of my team here at RJI. This is a chance to reveal a little more of myself to those of you just getting to share a bit of my world. I hope you learn something in the process. Welcome to this momentously beautiful Grand Rising.

My name is Irvin Moore I am an African-American man who truly believes he has a story to tell a story of a remarkable journey that may at times seem incredulous. It may inspire you or make you wonder at the variables that make life so interesting and so awesome. I’d like to begin by saying that I am the most recent team member of the Penn State University College of Education Restorative Justice Initiative . My actual title is Education Support and Community Liaison. I like that title a lot more than some of the other titles I’ve had over my 75 years of existence. Especially the last ones I had prior to being blessed to find kindred souls and justice inspired passions here at RJI . Those titles were ‘Convict, Inmate, Prisoner, Con and Criminal’. Imagine my extreme pleasure in having people think I deserve to be hired to work here. I came to RJI about three months ago. I walked through the doors of the Chambers building on December 6, 2021, heading to meet my new boss and director Efraín Marimón, who I had only talked to by phone once before. I didn’t even know what Efraïn looked like, and I didn’t even care. The words he had spoken to me a few days prior, when he said, “ Irvin it seems that we may have a place for you here at Restorative Justice”. Well , those words were enough to give Efraín the countenance of Michelangelo‘s David and the aura of a saint as far as I was concerned. I didn’t even care that the verb ‘May’ was used in the sentence that heralded one of the most amazing and joyous aspects of this journey I’d been on for the past eight months leading up to that phone conversation. I never even heard the context of probability or possibility that clothed the word ‘May’ somewhere between yes and no it is or it ‘ain’t’ Because I had a job! Not only did I have a job but I had a job that I had been shaped, fashioned, hammered and beaten on the anvils of dread and dire circumstance to be ideally suited for. The people in positions of influence, power and leadership who had made this happen only had an idea of the ‘rightness’ of this hiring. They had made the decision to approve it on what to them met certain criteria and perhaps seemed logical. And I will forever be grateful and appreciative of that. But I knew! I knew I had the job that I was a perfect fit for it because, unlike the character Brooks in the story ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, I believed in myself and in the power of positive thought. I wasn’t gonna let anything stop me. After all, it was positive thought and application that had allowed me to survive 52 years of imprisonment and the Hell that was the Pennsylvania State penitentiary system. I lived through decades of retributive, punishment-filled, so-called justice, and had come out on the other side alive, still sane, educated and ready and willing to give my all to change the monstrosity that we had allowed the criminal justice system to become. If I had to stand on a soap box on a different street corner every day from now on, or I had to shout it from the pinnacles of the high-rise buildings in this town, I was going to tell my story and make my message known. But… I was hired. Hired by the Restorative Justice Initiative, which meant I was given the opportunity I had prepared myself for since my arrest way back in 1969 and my subsequent goal to use education as a way to come to grips with, and maybe even rise above this life sentence in Pennsylvania, which many people have never known is really automatic and natural life, or life until you die. Or, as CADBI, and other prisoners rights organizations teach, DBI or death by incarceration. Almost from the beginning of my journey behind the walls of Pennsylvania’s notorious Graterford penitentiary I follow the advice, examples and threats of good, solid, caring old Heads who always promoted education, even education behind bars as being the only way to approach the serving of time so that one could make time serve them. I took that wise counsel and immersed myself in reading , studying, asking questions and learning everything I could about…. Well, everything. It didn’t matter what. I simply wanted to learn. It took a few years before we understood the importance of goal oriented education, and what better goal for us than a degree? This was in 1972 and we were brash enough in those days hopeful enough and lucky enough to start on a path similar to today’s Restorative Justice Initiative’s prison education program by inviting colleges and universities to come into the penitentiaries and sit down with us hardened criminals who felt that education could make a difference. They came, agreed with our proposals and, believe me, our universe, my universe, expanded exponentially. Many of us found that our lives would never or could ever be the same. I was able to acquire a couple of Associate degrees, a paraprofessional teaching certificate and even began teaching my own classes at the prison. Things were opening up along lines we’d never before experienced. The only problem was…the pendulum. The pendulum of change was about to swing back in the other direction and we didn’t even know it. This was something that was brought on by self-serving ideologues, politicians who lambasted those criminals who deserve nothing but punishment but who instead went to college on the taxpayers dime, and businessmen who felt that the prison industrial complex was something that they could begin making huge amounts of money from. They were correct. It has made and cost trillions. They just didn’t tell you who paid for all of that. The politician screamed ‘Elect me and I’ll put a stop to the foolishness of furloughs, school, educational release, work release, degree oriented education, speaking engagements, job training and anything except Punishment!’ And so the pendulum swung back and in the process got stuck in that retributive mode for the next 40 years we stopped educating the incarcerated. We stop preparing them for release from jail and the possibility of a successful ReEntry. We begin the process of locking up more and more people, too many conveniently being people of color. We go on to build more and more prisons and make certain they are filled to capacity by doubling, tripling and quadrupling the length of time that a person will stay behind bars. We create the Prison Industrial Complex and begin to treat the carceral population like the lepers of old. Shunned and ostracized. Inhumane . Today we have the distinction in the United States of America of having the world’s largest prison population which is over 6 million people behind bars and more than 10 million people under some form of supervision, control or sanction by probation or parole authorities. It appears that we are all, in one form another, in the belly of the beast and the impact is staggering. So you might be asking now how did I get out ?How did I get here? What’s the deal? Well the pendulum has started to swing again people. You may not have noticed it but things are starting to change once again, and this time we’ve got to help promote and sustain and maintain the change. That’s what RJI is all about. Doing what needs to be done to return education to prisons and back to deserving individuals and communities that need it. So that they and we all can learn and do better. I work at the Chambers building. At The Penn State University College of Education’s Restorative Justice Initiative. I work under the directorship of Efraín Marimón who has put together an office with teams of wonderful brilliant, passionate and committed students graduates and undergraduates, interns, professors, volunteers and rank and file workers like myself who know what being in the belly of the beast is like, and who don’t want to see anyone else lose hope or their humanity in places like that. You can find us there or wherever the work takes us. You may also get a chance to see among the motley crew of dedicated souls, a big brown and white 170 pound bear of a dog named Fred who works with us and who moves amongst us spreading his beauty and his love, who somehow, by the grace and the blessings of life, followed me home from jail one year ago. When you see us at RJI, walking on Campus or anywhere we may be traveling, don’t be shy or afraid. When you see us just come up and say hi and ask us about the work we are doing at the Restorative Justice Initiative. It may interest you.